


Going Through Changes

by Missy



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Coping, Gen, Humor, Post-Movie(s), Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not easy to live years of your life as a  temperamental beast, but it's even harder to remember to act like a human being when you're miraculously changed back into a human.</p><p>Good think Adam has friends to help him cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Through Changes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Trope_Bingo, prompt "Transformation".

It took him a few months to stop dropping his teacups on to the floor – his fingers are smaller, his nails short and well-trimmed instead of curled and razor-sharp. His claws once held his cup in place – down there’s nothing to hold it still but his own clumsy hands. 

Hands he wished were eternally steady as Missus Potts let out another blood-curdling scream at the sight of a pile of china shards littering the breakfast table.

He’s learned how to hunch over his saucers and the table, slowly slurping up mouthfuls of tea while keeping his eyes glued to the cup pressed between his suddenly enormous-seeming fingers. It was odd that when the stakes were higher – when the little cups pressed between his hands were the children of his head cook – he’d been as gentle as a lamb.

*** 

Clothing, too, was an odd thing to acclimate himself to. He was used to avoiding the painstaking horrors of grooming, for instance, shunning the comb and the brush for the art of self-arrangement. Unfortunately, he couldn’t simply lick himself clean now – even though Belle told him she’d be delighted to help. Ten years of marriage had taught him that when she arched her eyebrow like that she definitely meant business. So he forced his fingers to curl around the ivory heft of his brush, molded them to follow the heavy strands of his hair, and retrained his muscles to pull it through his heavy knots. Several combs and two brushes broke in the wake of his force, but he figured out what to do, after a while.

“Muscle memory,” he told Belle proudly, and she gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

His nose wrinkled up as he returned to his eternal struggle with his cravat.

He wondered for the millionth time why society demanded so many damnable layers of cloth to be considered a proper member of its hallowed stratus. Pants and shirts were easy enough to remember, but when he was the Beast he’d required Lumiere’s help to tie his cravat and put on his jacket, and even sash his own belt. These weren’t tasks he was comfortable doing with Lumiere’s help now that he was married to Belle; he wanted to appear coolly confident in her presence, and allowing his servants to pamper and cosset him was what had brought him such trouble in the first place. If he asked for HER help, meanwhile, he’d get a dissertation on the proper method of wearing watch fobs in fourteenth century Germany. Though he dearly adored Belle’s mind and never found her talk tiring, he wanted practical help, not a history lesson.

So he struggled on, heading to formal meetings with the other lords of France in uneven side parts, with handkerchiefs drooping out of his pocket and shoes improperly laced (that was another disagreeable matter – could they not make the laces larger?!). Lumire tried to catch him before he headed out for the morning’s ride, just to button up his buttons or fix his boots, but often they missed one another, and often he showed up disheveled to this place or that.

He could never decide which was worse to endure, the mocking stares or the overly-kind whispers, the gestures, the placating helpers. 

It had been much easier to dress when his wardrobe could quite literally make suggestions for alterations.

** 

When he asked Lumiere if he avoided trying to use his hands for fear of setting things on fire, the assistant smiled and nudged him in the ribs.

“Gloves, mon ami!”

And, for the only time in his life, Adam envied his former candelabra.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **Beauty and the Beast** , all of whom are the property of the **Disney Corporation**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
